Wii Software Dominated Worldwide Sales For 2009

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Total software unit sales declined eight percent globally.

By Jim Reilly

Top Global Markets, a combined monthly report from The NPD Group in the U.S., Europe's GfK Chart-Track Limited and Japan's Enterbrain, Inc, has revealed the top five selling titles worldwide in 2009, which unsurprisingly list Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort and New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

Modern Warfare 2 totaled nearly 12 million units sold, with the majority of its sales coming from U.S. retailers. The title did the worst of the top five in Japan, however, moving just over 200,000 copies.

There is some bad news, however, as the data revealed an eight percent drop is overall software unit sales. This was due mostly in part by the shrinking PlayStation 2 software market, which saw a 57 percent decrease in the top global markets in 2009.

NPD analyst Anita Frazier says that even though companies were set on releasing fewer, better titles, the industry still saw a growth in new titles.

"With the huge investment needed to produce software for this generation's consoles, many publishers talk about releasing fewer titles each year, which will allow their teams to better focus on maximizing the success of each title," said Anita Frazier of NPD Group.

"The theory is that this will produce more high- quality games resulting in better sales. However, the year-end data from 2009 shows us that the number of titles entering the market is still growing with 778 new titles released in 2009, up from the 764 in 2008.